


bergamot and vetiver

by kormantic



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Birthdays, Foreshadowing, Gen, drinking whiskey on a stormy night, smoking cigarettes with your mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21811093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kormantic/pseuds/kormantic
Summary: Birthdays, whiskey and the Duality of Man.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	bergamot and vetiver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



The night was lashing, March roaring outdoors, but it was cozy at the tableside. The kitchen, redolent with hot whiskey and woodsmoke, graced with snuffed candles and icing sugar, was crowded with petty bickering, grand philosophizing and practical discussions of twitchy plumbing.

“Ugh, it’s too sweet!” Justin complained, shoving his plate away.

“Just means more for me!” Lexie said, promptly dragging his plate to her side of the table and stacking it on her own empty dish, careful not to get crumbs on the handsome old edition of fairy tales she’d only just unwrapped.

“It’s Lexie’s birthday, she gets to choose the cake. Even if it _is_ too sweet,” Abby admitted, squinching her nose at Lexie in apology.

“All you cultured palates. Can you never enjoy the simple things?” Lexie blinked up at them, her pointed chin resting on her fists.

“But a _confetti_ cake, from a _box mix_!” Justin looked scandalized.

“You’re such a snob,” Lexie grinned. “I pity you, I truly do. Sugar is _delicious_ , and this is the loveliest cake I’ve ever had. I adore it, Abby!”

Rafe sawed away at the cake and grabbed a hunk of it to eat out of his hand, promptly getting frosting on his nose.

“Philistines all around me! Daniel,” Justin exhorted, “Tell them you’re ashamed to be seen with them.”

Daniel only looked at them indulgently, glasses propped into his dark hair, flushed with drink and smiling over his mug.

Shrugging, Rafe washed his hands in the sink and then headed for the record player to set an album on the turntable. His vinyl collection was foxed and random, Callas and Captain & Tenille, Blondie and Benny Goodman and Kurtis Blow. He put on some REM and brought Abby a second glass of whiskey, unasked.  
  
Abby was hemming a curtain out of red and gold damask and singing, _“I have got to find the river,”_ as she made the stiff fabric behave properly for the neat sting of the needle.

“We could put in solar panels,” Daniel said thoughtfully, continuing an earlier conversation with Rafe about their frankly unreliable water heater. “And while we’re at it, we should add a well and a few rain barrels. If we worked at it, we could live completely off the grid by the time you have your dissertation done, Abby.”

“I think the Shakers started out like this,” Justin said dreamily, gazing at the ceiling.

“We’re nigh into starting our own religion!” Lexie giggled, and toasted Justin with her waterglass of Tullamore Dew.

“I don’t think they drank as much whiskey as we do,” Rafe said tartly.

“ _Uisce Beatha_ ,” Justin murmured. “Water of life and all that.”

Abby let her sewing lapse to look up and around the room. It was the heart of the house, and her favorite place in all the world, when her friends were in it, too. Bergamot of Rafe’s aftershave, vetiver from Daniel’s carefully designed earthen retaining wall, the tall bearded grass replacing the box hedge there. “Vetiver roots grow straight down. Prevent erosion. Leave a legacy,” he'd said. She liked the sheltered privacy, the dense leaves peaceably letting the wind sough through. Lexie’s basil struggling in the pot, always either under or over watered on the windowsill, coriander dusting the mortar and pestle Justin insisted upon using to grind the spices – “A mill is just is not the same, Abby.”

Abby wondered aloud, “I don’t know what would kill Rafe first, lack of spirits or lack of coffee.” Rafe gave her a mock glare and took a noisy slurp from his cup.

“And _you_ , little chatterbox, silence wouldn’t suit you,” Justin said, pointing an accusing finger at Lexie with her rumpled hair and minxy smile.

“The hymns would be nice,” Daniel said, giving Abby a soft look, his mouth straight and sincere.

“We’re more like Hogwarts, anyway, I think,” Lexie said, stretching her arms overhead and yawning like a cat.

“I went to boarding school, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it was _nothing_ like Harry Potter,” Rafe said, dry and rueful.

“Even so, we’re all plainly Slytherin – but for Abby, of course, alone in Hufflepuff house,” Justin said, giving her a shake of the head and a clucked tongue. “Poor poppet.”

Abby amiably lobbed a tiny pretzel at him, asking “What would your patronus be, then?”

“Oh, let me guess!” sang Lexie. Slitting her eyes, she placed her hand to her forehead theatrically before pronouncing, “An owl, I’d say.”

“Ohhhhh wait, can I have a centaur? Clever, but rugged and shirtless, too? Although I know fuckall about constellations.”

“It’s your patronus, Piglet, so make hay while the sun shines, etcetera… Now Rafe is obviously a cheetah. Or a jaguar. Big cat, definitely. Daniel is a badger. Dig a snug burrow and all fierce to anyone not allowed in it.”

“What about me?” Abby asked.

Lexie blinked at her, considering and fond before nodding, resolute.

“Yours is… I see a stag for you. Just grand and graceful, with such horns, a crown as vast as the World tree. He’s quite regal, your red hart.”

Abby wondered if it was a coincidence that Lexie had chosen a stag as her patronus – like Harry Potter’s own. She'd been 15 when the first book had come out, and she'd read it furtively, tucked behind a history text. As an abandoned child, left on her own in care from ten on, she had, of course, yearned for a Hogwarts of her own, no matter Rafe’s lived experience. Trinity was not far off, spellwork aside, now that they had the house. When they were all together, Abby felt nearly exultant, especially on days they devoted every free hour to making the place as snug and homely as any lonesome child could wish. 

His tone uncharacteristically playful, Daniel resettled his glasses and said, “I would posit that each of us has a Literary Figure rather than an animal.”

“I like it! Yours is Cædmon, then? Mine is Donne, obviously,” Justin declared. “George Eliot is yours all over, Abby. Lexie’s would be… Georges Sand, I bet, with all her bodice rippers.”

Lexie clapped her hands and beamed at Abby. “Sisters are they in the mode of men! Two Georges, no waiting!”

“Truly we are monuments to feminism,” Abby said drolly, and Lexie gave a giddy hiccup she swallowed down with another sip of Dew.

“Rafe, now, we must condemn to Ben Jonson.” Giving Rafe a solemn salute, Justin finished his own whiskey and gave a sigh of satisfaction.

“No, I object,” Rafe said, forlorn. He nudged his kitchen chair until it butted up against Lexie’s and lit a cigarette. “I’m bone weary of that grim bastard, I want someone livelier – give me Stevenson, he can have the shadow of Jonson on his head instead.”

“He did borrow _Underwoods_ ,” Daniel agreed.

“Exactly. All his writing can be influenced as you like by all manner of Jacobean drama, but with a detective story in the middle.”

“I approve your request and hereby assign you Robert Louis S as your projected soul,” Justin said grandly, sketching some parody of a blessing in the air with his hand.

Daniel, nodding, lifted his mug, saying, “To the Duality of Man, as set forth in Jekyll and Hyde.”

“And what of the Duality of Woman, then?” Lexie said, tilting her head, eyes gleaming beneath arched brows.

Justin stuck his tongue out at Lexie, before interjecting, “Oh, speaking of men and monsters, did you know that Bram Stoker wrote the most _ridiculous_ fan letters to Walt Whitman?”

“Didn’t Jules Verne write to Edgar Allen Poe?” Lexie asked.

Justin fell back in his chair, laughing, “He _did_ , the dear thing. Just thrilled to all of Edgar’s gothic tales.”

“Why do they all have to write about murder all the time?” Abby groused. “I do hate a horror story—they make my skin creep.”

“But I wanted you to come see _Shaun of the Dead_ with me! It’s mostly a comedy anyway. Oh, _do_ come!” Lexie was at her winsome best, sweetly beseeching.

“Maaaaaybe,” Abby hedged. Abby truly disliked being afraid, swamped in dread, belly a wet knot, hands numb and trembling. “I don’t have any idea why you like them so much.”

Lexie stole Rafe’s fag and puffed it nearly to the filter while she deliberated, finally aiming the smoke in a plume at Abby before asking, “Don’t you want to know what you’d do, though? In an extreme event. Not your garden variety zombie apocalypse, but say, a robber, or a hostage crisis. Don’t you want to know yourself?”

Abby knew herself down to her last drop of blood. ‘Extreme events’ had been more regular than teas at her mother’s dodgy flat, and perhaps only _half_ as regular at the children’s home.

“There’s no way of knowing,” Abby said flatly. ”You can plan and train and speculate all you like, but there’s only panic in the moment, and it’s pure chance the way you’ll break.”

Lexie paled a little, stubbing out the cigarette. “Janey _Mack_ , Abby. A romcom instead, then. Nice and pat, formula and treacle tart.”

Abby was instantly remorseful and glared at her tumbler of whiskey in rebuke before setting it down with a crisp click and climbing out of her chair to jog around the table and throw her arms around Lexie’s neck.

“I am a terrible and undeserving friend. Here it is your birthday and I’m forecasting doom all over you. Can you ever forgive me, gosling?”

“Already done,” Lexie said in her vivacious way, her smooth cheek warm against Abby’s, her basil-oil scent tinged in bergamot and the sulfur flare of a new match as Lexie lit another cigarette, the last one in Abby’s pack.

END  


**Author's Note:**

> Their Literary Patrons are extrapolated from their thesis titles. Title/lyrics from REM's [Find the River](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voD6UAE-6rc). I do apologize for not coming up with more JV/EAP (I actually own that Kate Beaton shirt!), but I did try to work it in. Your prompts were lovely, and I hope I hit the mark. Happy Yuletide, gonergone, and may your next year, and every year, be pleasant and bright.


End file.
